Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram would be the 3 top platforms that would come to your mind while thinking about marketing channels. Isn’t it? Also, the chances of your business promotion on these three platforms would be higher than on any other platform.
But what If you find an alternate platform with more users than two of these combined?
Its WhatsApp.
What is WhatsApp Marketing Automation?
Whatsapp marketing is a type of marketing that relies on using WhatsApp as a tool for communication with your customers. WhatsApp as a messaging app is so powerful that it has an audience of over 2 billion active users, and boasts open rates of up to 98% making it a powerful tool for businesses to reach a large number of people.
WhatsApp can be used for many different purposes, such as sending messages to your contacts about the promotions you have going on, sending them links to blog posts you’ve written or company-related articles, or even making small talk with them.
Another way businesses can use WhatsApp is to keep customers updated on what’s happening with the Business. It also allows them to ask questions, give feedback, and give updates about the Business.
Even many people have claimed that it is more effective than other traditional forms of advertising. Therefore, WhatsApp marketing can be an effective way for businesses to reach out to their target audience.
Future of Whatsapp Marketing for businesses?
The future of WhatsApp marketing for business lies in its ability to connect with potential customers on a more personal level. In the past, businesses have used WhatsApp to send out mass messages and coupons. However, WhatsApp’s new features, such as Status and Groups, allow businesses to connect personally with their target audience.
As the future of Whatsapp for business (both B2B & B2C) has been promising, companies are investing their time in this platform to share catalogs and order bookings for customers.
From two-click payments to AI-powered recommendation engines, commerce companies have been on the front in enhancing upselling and cross-selling opportunities based on users’ intent and past behavior. Moreover, with more expanding capabilities of WhatsApp, numerous companies across the globe are betting high on this platform for contactless shopping.
Sames goes for other promising industries too. For example, the future of WhatsApp marketing for business is about creating connections and building relationships with potential customers. By using Status and Groups, businesses can connect with their target audience more personally and build a community around their brand.
WhatsApp Marketing for Business: Reasons why business should use it:
1. Audience
WhatsApp is a top-rated messaging app with billions of users worldwide, giving companies a large potential audience for marketing messages as more than 60% of them use it daily.
With such a global reach, you can easily connect with new customers worldwide and share information about your services or products. In addition, Whatsapp has several features that make it ideal for businesses, such as group chat, broadcast lists, and voice and video calling.
As WhatsApp has been an effective alternative to SMS these days, it’s considered to be the most cost-effective tool. In the United Kingdom alone, at least 80% of adults aged 18 to 24 use WhatsApp as their primary messaging tool, which makes WhatsApp the best available option for branding and reaching out to the mass audience in a pocket-friendly way.
Also Read: How is Whatsapp Business API Effective in Business?
2. Targeting
Fortunately for marketers, one can easily target their potential customers by sending them direct messages. From there, the sky is the limit. Most businesses can’t do this over Facebook Messenger or even Instagram. This makes WhatsApp a great tool for reaching out to specific groups of people, such as families interested in vacationing in Hawaii or folks who want to try a particular food truck.
3. Outperform your Competition
If you are targeting an audience that isn’t receptive to being sold on platforms like Facebook or Instagram, sending them a message through WhatsApp could be just what they need to get their attention.
There are tons of ways you can attract the right audience without coming across as too pushy, so don’t be afraid to try a few things this holiday season.
4. Extensively Cost-effective
The best thing about WhatsApp for Business is that it is cost-effective. Unlike other platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which cost you hundreds and thousands of $$$ to run advertisements.
WhatsApp Marketing Automation: Ways to use it for Business
Apart from the WhatsApp business app and its numerous benefits, another thing we’ll be discussing in this blog is WhatsApp automation and how to use it to improve your marketing and customer service communications.
As automation has overtaken all the integral parts of marketing and sales operations at companies nowadays, everything, including (but not limited to) bulk messages, notifications, alerts, upsell/cross-sell, and ever support, is just a click away for marketers.
Additionally, businesses are using chat systems to increase customer engagement rates and parallelly leveraging WhatsApp marketing to automate the entire customer journey, message and flows. With solutions like WhatsApp business API, companies can give wings to their WhatsApp business marketing strategy.
Read More: Why does your Business Need a Whatsapp Business Chatbot?
A few of the benefits which can be leveraged through WhatsApp automation are:
1. Automated and Proactive Communication
Brands worldwide are automating WhatsApp to create proactive message templates directed at clients who have chosen to receive updates on orders, appointments, service requests, or payments. This post automation help companies save thousands of dollars either invested in agent training or automated systems like IVRs.
2. Automated Upselling and Cross-selling
As self-explanatory, an automated WhatsApp system may help automate a business’s sales flow. Meanwhile, companies are leveraging the WhatsApp business platform for post-purchase communication to cross-sell. The thought is to utilize the consumer’s purchase data as an indicator of what might (or might now) be of their interest. For example, a user purchasing hiking boots would also be interested in checking out hiking bags.
3. Message Flow Automation
You may design a custom message flow and automate pre-defined information such as FAQ, auto-replies to queries, provide customer service hours, or program any other answer that will shorten the time customers must wait.
4. Enhanced Conversion Rates
Companies focus more on delighting customers than acquiring them as delighted customers are more likely to re-buy from brands and become loyal. With automation, businesses can guide customers through the sales funnel and move them closer to purchase.
5. Collect Reviews and Ratings
Companies can push easy notifications with automated time delays to collect reviews about their products or services. Brands can also use innovative ways to push surveys to customers for more upgraded services or solutions.
6. Automating Offers and Promotions
As the restaurant industry has been doing for a long now, companies can leverage automated WhatsApp marketing by promoting offers and promotional events. You can further connect with them one-on-one for a more personalized discussion.
Read: How is Whatsapp Integration Useful for Business?
7. Sales Process Automation
Whatsapp marketing for businesses could be the next big thing for automated sales processes as companies can automate complicated selling flows without human intervention. Through this, customers can be asked for their intent, showcase the catalog with the right products, and help customers easily check out. So isn’t this a win-win for both companies and customers? This would further result in a sales person available for customers 24X7.
8. Automate FAQs
Customers always have questions, they always had, and they always will. One important thing WhatsApp for Business can automate for customer dealing Business is to automate the process of frequently asked questions and answer back to the customers with pre-defined answers. This would prevent dropping out a customer as responding to a query fast will help customers get solutions and save human agents’ efforts.
Wrapping Up.
Whatsapp has undeniably been a strong tool for interaction and communication; effortlessness has been a primary reason for this.
Being the most used platform and a great tool to connect with the crowd, build connection/community and promote your services/products, WhatsApp has been a favorite platform for marketing.
As businesses around us understand the importance of reaching out to customers, they are after innovative solutions to ensure customers are reached and engaged in a better way than what competitors are doing. And what would be better to reach out to them on platforms they are already active on?